02.09.2026 • 24/2026
Launch of the European Real Estate Index (EREI): German housing prices continue to rise more slowly than in Europe
Growth in asking prices for German residential properties offered for sale has lagged the European EREI aggregate since spring 2025. This is shown by the new European Real Estate Index (EREI) presented today by the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH). This novel data service hinges on more than 43 million listings on online real estate platforms and provides monthly comparisons of residential asking prices and advertised rents across 1,154 European regions in near-real-time.
Michael Koetter
Read
Intangible Assets and Imperfections in Product and Labor Markets
Eric Bartelsman, Sabien Dobbelaere, Alessandro Zona Mattioli
IWH Discussion Papers,
No. 5,
2026
Abstract
This paper develops a micro-founded framework linking price-cost and wage markups to intangible assets. Intangible assets, once created, are a source of firm rents. Owing to limits to enforceable ownership and the non-rival nature of knowledge, these rents can be both retained by the origin firm and transferred to a competitor through poaching of workers. Search and matching frictions affect labor mobility and result in bargaining over rents between the firm and the worker. This environment generates hold-up in intangible asset creation and motivates rent sharing. Under non-compete agreements, poached workers face start delays that weaken outside options. Using microdata from the Netherlands, we document higher price-cost and wage markups in more intangible-intensive firms and lower wages for workers with non-compete agreements, consistent with the model.
Read article
Reassessing EU Comparative Advantage: The Role of Technology
Filippo di Mauro, Marco Matani, Gianmarco Ottaviano
International Economics,
Vol. 183,
2025
Abstract
Based on a sufficient statistics approach, we show how the state of technology of European industries relative to the rest of the world can be empirically assessed in a way that is simple in terms of computation, parsimonious in terms of data requirements, but still comprehensive in terms of information. The lack of systematic cross-industry correlation between export specialization and technological advantage suggests that standard measures of revealed comparative advantage only imperfectly capture a country’s technological prowess due to the concurrent influences of factor prices, market size, markups, firm selection and market share reallocation. These findings offer policy insights relevant to the EU’s external competitiveness debate, echoing several recommendations from the Draghi report. Achieving export specialization in key sectors requires more than just technological superiority.
Read article
Research Articles
Research Articles Explore cutting-edge research based on CompNet’s micro-aggregated firm-level data and related analytical tools. These articles cover empirical and theoretical…
See page
LRF Research Profile
Research Profile of the Department of Laws, Regulations and Factor Markets The Department of Laws, Regulations and Factor Markets conducts research on the interaction of labour…
See page
Brown Bag Seminar
Brown Bag Seminar Financial Markets Department The seminar series "Brown Bag Seminar" was offered on a regular basis by members of the Financial Markets department and their…
See page
IWH Subsidy Database
IWH Subsidy Databse The microdatabase currently comprises nine data sets on direct business subsidy programmes in Germany. The programme statistics kept by the project sponsors…
See page
Interviews
Quotations and Interviews It is not our style to abbreviate complex issues - but getting to the heart of the matter is. Below you will find quotes and interviews with IWH experts.…
See page
Financial Stability
Financial Systems: The Anatomy of the Market Economy How the financial system is constructed, how it works, how to keep it fit and what good a bit of chocolate can do. Dossier In…
See page
Research Clusters
Three Research Clusters Each IWH research group is assigned to a topic-oriented research cluster. The clusters are not separate organisational units, but rather bundle the…
See page
